Cattlemax Online software upgrade

[Gators Rule]

Have any of you Cattlemax software users upgraded to the Online version of Cattlemax? If so, what are your thoughts? I posted here as I have both registered and commercial cattle.

thanks in advance,

David

 

[Dega Moo]

We upgraded to Online reasonably soon after it came out. We have four users but only three of the team really use it. Really nice things are

• updates can be made while in the pasture or at chute side and are immediately available
• cowboy can look up info about a cow on his iPhone rather than call someone and ask them to look it up on a computer
• I don't update the software on my computer ever
• I don't worry about my system barfing and losing the data
• I can use whatever device (phone, tablet, laptop or desktop that is handy

The functionality is pretty good - I don't think I need to regurgitate that list. There are some things I'd like to see done differently and may someday get around to sending suggestions. In particular it would be nice to have an audit history of data changes. I'd also like to have greater freedom to build reports or easier free form queries. Grouping or "selecting" records can be frustrating. For instance animals generally have a status of something like dead, active, inactive, reference or whatever and they generally will be listed as a bull, steer, heifer or cow. I'd like to say select every animal that is NOT BULL but have to choose bull or steer or....

I know some folks get worked up and are uncomfortable with the thought of their data sitting on a server somewhere in the cloud owned by someone else. As a former IT Pro I am solidly comfortable that my data is far safer in this environment than I could imagine it being sitting on an individual system - especially one I may take to a chute event out in a pasture.

Overall I'm happy and confident the online version was the proper choice for our ranch.

 

[Jessica06]

I dug my heels in on upgrading until about 2 months ago. Once you get CS figured out and are comfortable with it, it's hard to think about changing to a whole new system. But after biting the bullet, I must admit that I'm enjoying it MUCH more than I thought I would. It's not perfect, but a lot of things are fixed that really frustrated me with CS. The Pastures screen is great..no more digging through the Settings tab to find out who is where. Pedigrees are still a pain. Smart groups are awesome. Reports are much better. Group updates are easier, particularly weaning and preg checks. Right now, I am loving the Calving screen. So much easier.

With CS, I would get waay behind on making updates because I would have to go into the office and fire up the laptop. I put it off, a lot, and would sometimes get weeks behind. Now, I usually get on my iPad in the kitchen or while we're watching TV and make all of my updates. That's probably the best thing about Online, for me.